http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/10/30/of-broken-windows-and-broken-policy/ Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:17:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/10/30/of-broken-windows-and-broken-policy/#comment-7904 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:43:23 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/?p=3038#comment-7904 [...] Update: My colleague Mike Sykuta beat me to it. [...]

]]> http://truthonthemarket.com/2009/10/30/of-broken-windows-and-broken-policy/#comment-7903 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:30 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/?p=3038#comment-7903 Obama apologists would answer back, well, first of all, the value of a job today may be higher than the discounted present value of a different, even if more productive, job tomorrow. They would also say, “haven’t you heard of the velocity of money?” If the choice is between mattress stuffing and paying to dig and refill ditches, we’re better off with the latter. I think both of these are wrong, in part for Bastiat’s reason (because even if they are taking account of opportunity cost (which often they are not), they are probably discounting it far too heavily) but more because of the various costs of government allocation of resources ranging from rent-seeking to harmful industrial policy to process inefficiency, to government aggrandizement, etc., etc. These costs they discount completely–or even count as benefits.

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